The increasing demand for lower power consumption and environmentally friendly consumer devices has resulted in interest in power supply circuits with “green” technology. For example, on average, a notebook power adapter continuously “plugged in” spends 67% of its time in idle mode. Even with a power adapter which conforms to the regulatory requirements of dissipating less then 0.5 watts/hour, this extended idle time adds up to 3000 watt-hours of wasted energy each year per adapter. When calculating the wasted energy of the numerous idle power adapters, the power lost is considerable.